Former Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes, who has been carving out a career in the media since retiring, would love nothing more than for his old team and its players to get back on the winning track.
But when it comes to running back Saquon Barkley, Tynes, who is pulling just as much for Barkley as anyone, sees a player who last year appeared to lack the "want to" in his game.
Tynes was responding to comments made by Barkley during an appearance on the Pat McAfee Show this week in which the former Penn State star challenged his skeptics to pick a side and stay on that side regardless of what happens moving forward.
“You can say what you want about me . . . but when things turn around, I can see how everyone shifted to the other side. And make sure you stick to the other side,” Barkley said. “Keep the same energy.”
Last season was Barkley's worst as a pro from a statistical perspective. He finished averaging 3.7 yards per carry and with just 593 yards in 13 games played (he missed four games due to a sprained ankle).
But to be fair to Barkley, who this year will count for $7.2 million against the Giants salary cap, he is coming back from a torn ACL that required reconstructive surgery, an injury that the Giants brought him back slowly from.
Throw in the sprained ankle and the struggles of the offensive line, and there s certainly more than enough evidence to suggest that the odds were stacked against Barkley last season.
Barkley, 25, hasn't been as productive as during his award-winning rookie season. The second overall pick in the 2019 draft rushed for a career-high 1,307 yards on 261 carries with 11 touchdowns and caught 91 balls for another 721 yards and four touchdowns in 16 games.
But the injury bug started to get him beginning in his second season, each of his injuries happening early enough in the year to affect his production. Barkley missed three games with a high ankle sprain suffered in Week 3. Then in 2020, the torn ACL injury came in Week 2, and then in 2021, the ankle sprain in Week 5.
This past year, it was certainly debatable as to whether Barkley truly looked comfortable out there, as, before his injury, he failed to top 57 yards rushing, that coming in Week 2 of the season against Washington.
In Week 4, Barkley had his most productive game, that against New Orleans, in which he rushed for 52 yards on 13 carries and one touchdown and added five receptions for 74 yards and a touchdown.
But along the way, there were questions about Barkley being able to outrun people to the edge or make people miss. According to Pro Football Focus, Barkley forced a career-low 20 missed tackles (not counting his injury-shortened 2020 season), posted a career-low 21.6 percent breakaway percentage, and recorded just 27 first downs.
Interestingly, in his first two seasons, Barkley ran more zone rushing attempts than gap. Last year, he had nearly an equal number of zone and gap rushing attempts.
In Week 17, Barkley posted his first 100-yard rushing performance since Week 16 of 2019, when he rushed for a career-high 189 yards on 22 carries against Washington. In that Week 17 game against the Bears at Soldier Field in 2021 (the site of his ACL injury the year prior), Barkley recorded 102 yards on 21 carries, looking more like the 2018 version of himself.
With Barkley presumably no longer having to rehab an injury, it will be interesting to see how he looks when the players return to the field--assuming he's not traded before then. And if there was indeed a subconscious mental block in Barkley's game as he tried to regain his footing, hopefully, that will dissipate.
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